


you are the storm i am lost in

by palomeheart



Series: laph [2]
Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: AU- Botanic Garden, AUgust - Freeform, Arguing, Established Relationship, Gardens & Gardening, M/M, Magical Realism, Mental Health Issues, Rabbits, Weather, but they make up, mentions of vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 12:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21197642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palomeheart/pseuds/palomeheart
Summary: They don’t talk about it, but if Dan were weather, Phil thinks, he would be a storm. And they’ve had a lot of storms this summer.a laph timestamp, for the bingo squares 'magic au' 'sugar' and 'cereal'





	you are the storm i am lost in

**Author's Note:**

> Title from an e.e. cummings poem again. I think. Honestly I had the hardest time finding a credited source of this line. [This](https://riddlefromthemiddle.com/2017/03/12/sunday-snapshot-you-are-the-storm-i-am-lost-in/) is the closest I got.
> 
> Also, rabbit disclaimer, I am not a rabbit expert, and am in no way claiming that a rabbit would be alright after eating Dan and Phil's ridiculously sugary cereal. It is but a convenient plot device, and an attempt to get another bingo square.

Phil wakes to the familiar, steady thrum of rain on the window and a heavy, warm weight on his chest. Heather, probably. She’s particularly scared of thunder, which seems to have started up again sometime in the night. A loud crack rips through the quiet patter of the rain, and the little body on top of him begins to tremble, confirming his suspicions. 

“Shh, it’s okay girl,” Phil whispers, voice low in the uncertain hour as he brings a hand up to soothe through her fur. It’s hard these days with the near constant cloud cover to tell when it’s time to wake up, but if Phil had to guess he’d say it’s probably a bit before 6. An hour before either of them have to get up. He glances over at the limp form next to him, dotted with several smaller lumps that had clearly ignored the no rabbits in the bed rule again tonight. 

It’s a pretty useless rule, to be honest. 

Another crack of thunder, deep and rasping, makes several of the rabbits startle, but Dan stays still as Phil watches, breath held tight in his chest several beats. Dan had looked so tired when he’d crawled into bed somewhere around 3 am, and Phil doesn’t want to wake him any earlier than he needs to. Maybe he could even leave Dan to sleep and tell Alice that he’d come down with something. It’s not like there’ll be much to do at work today, if the weather holds. 

The summer had started out sunny and warm, a welcome reprieve from the cool damp of the spring, but somewhere around mid-July the weather turned, a slow, foggy drizzle progressing into a seemingly never ending rain increasingly peppered with loud and flashy thunderstorms. The jokes about ‘never a dry day in England’ had turned to jokes about who’d gotten around to building the ark yet, and, finally, to jokes about, ‘guess that climate change is really getting a shake on,’ edged with the metallic twang of genuine concern.

But it could partially be the crowd Phil hangs around. Gardeners do tend to be a bit more keyed into the weather. Phil had thought when he’d started at the garden that surely more rain could only be good for plants, but he was getting a quick course this summer in all the ways that wasn’t true.

With the heavy rain comes heavy, humid heat, a constant pressing down that makes it feel hard to get out of bed in the morning, hard to want to do more than lolling around in front of a fan or an open refrigerator door. Phil feels the telltale pricks of heat gathering behind his knees, the small of his back, and kicks a leg out from under the sheet, accidentally dislodging a rabbit in the process. He groans a hushed apology for what hadn’t been worth it anyway—the air outside the blankets is hardly any cooler. The windows have been just barely cracked for weeks in an attempt to keep the rain out while still letting any hint of a breeze it, but it’s pointless. Everyone seems to be waiting with bated breath at every first roll of thunder in the distance, but not one of the storms has managed to usher in a cool front, or even a refreshing breeze. 

Stagnant, stuffy, stifling. Those were the words of this summer. And Phil can’t help but worry. 

They don’t talk about it. 

Dan has always been chatty, since Phil had first met him, but Phil has learned the ways in which his chattiness circumvents, dodges and weaves around what’s really pressing, rambles out false leads. Dan is good a great number of things—Mario Kart, learning on his feet, being braver than he thinks he is, expressing things he’s passionate about—but Phil has been most impressed, possibly, by his ability to completely avoid anything that’s stressing him. He wouldn’t say this to Dan, of course, but it’s something he’s learned to notice.

The problem is where Dan is quick and diverting, Phil is slow and heavy footed. His mum always asked him where he went off to when he was younger, lost in his own head, and he hasn’t dropped the habit. He can see when things are off, when there are things to be concerned about, but he doesn’t often know the right questions to ask, the right places to press. His worry leaks out in quieter ways. Mugs of coffee and cocoa slipped into trembling hands, arms wrapped around shaking bodies, empty promises of _‘it’s okay, it’s alright, you don’t have to worry about that right now,’_ poured on deaf ears. 

But evidence seems to be mounting, louder and—well, _wetter_, that there is something to worry about.

Surrounded by rabbits he literally threw up because of a—seemingly—unrequited crush, Phil has had to re-examine his world view a little. Now, paying closer attention, there are things he notices. How often Alice and Nina have remarked on flowers blooming unseasonably early this spring, how long strange weather patterns hold. How well they line up with Dan’s moods. Microclimates clinging to him like a literal storm cloud hung above his head.

But they don’t talk about it.

They don’t talk about it, just like they don’t talk about how, every once in a while Phil’s anxiety will flare up and questions and doubts will crowd his head and he’ll clear his throat, then clear it again, then hiccough up the tiniest of rabbits to be added to the rabbit sanctuary formerly known as Phil’s apartment. Just like they don’t talk about Dan having essentially moved in along with the twenty-some odd rabbits, after just a few weeks of dating. Just like the don’t talk about the impending deadline of the start of school and the end of Dan’s semester off and its coincidence with the cresting intensity of the storms. 

They don’t talk about it, but if Dan were weather, Phil thinks, he would be a storm. And they’ve had a lot of storms this summer.

A flash of lightning illuminates the room suddenly, sending another rabbit scrabbling into the crook of his arm. He sighs, reaching out blindly for his phone to check the time. 6:13. He’s still got 47 more minutes to sleep, but he feels wide awake now. He turns to look at Dan again, watches the slow rise and fall of his chest for a while. Feeling the sharp swell of affection in his own chest. Love. They haven’t said it yet, but Phil’s felt it, urgent, slippery, hasty thing that it is, trying to slip through his hands, through his lips quicker than he can catch.

He’s pretty sure Dan feels it too, has caught the choked off words, prematurely aborted sentences he pretends to miss. It’s enough, for now, to have it hanging here between them, warm and ready as the rabbits, laden and boundless as the storm clouds. 

If it’s going to rain again today, that means he won’t be working outside—unless Alice is feeling particularly cruel—which means he can take a shower in the morning, a rare indulgence. Deciding he’s not going to get anymore sleep anyway, Phil gently lifts the soft, vibrating body off his chest and deposits her down onto the slight indentation he leaves in the mattress, hoping the residual body heat will be enough to appease her. It is Heather, he can see now, and she wriggles a bit until she’s pressed up against Dan’s back. Phil wishes, not for the first time, that he could just change into one of the rabbits, wriggle up in a warm knot of them, pressed to any surface of Dan. Why isn’t that his weird superpower?

He takes his time in the shower, letting the heat soak into his muscles, wash away some of the tension, and when he gets out condensation is clinging to all the surfaces of the room, fogging up the mirror and the glass doors of the shower so that it feels a bit like he’s slipped inside one of the omnipresent clouds. Glasses fogged as well, he half-trips over a rabbit on his way out of the bathroom, then fully trips over his own feet, banging his hip into the sink. He’s grumbling a string of curses as he goes to the kitchen to start the kettle for his coffee, so wrapped up in his grouching that he screams when he finally notices Dan stood by the fridge, holding a box of cereal in his hand.

“Sorry,” Phil gasps, clutching at his chest, “I thought you were still asleep.”

“You woke me when you got up.”

“Oh,” Phil says, breath pulled short by the sharp edge to Dan’s voice, “sorry about that.”

“Whatever. It’s fine.” He pauses, and Phil can hear a lingering something fizzling in the crowded, sticky air. “You left the cereal out.” 

Phil can tell that this is bad from the tense of Dan’s shoulders and the flat surface of his words, but his fuzzy morning brain is having trouble parsing why exactly. Usually he gets in trouble if he ate it all, but—

“One of the rabbits got into it.” He flips the box around so Phil can see the nibbled corner before throwing it back onto the counter. “Do you know how dangerous that is? Rabbits aren’t supposed to eat sugar like that. You said that you were going to do research and be careful and take care of the rabbits. You said that when we decided to keep some of them. You said you could handle it.”

“I know Dan, I—” Phil is scrambling to keep up with the pace of the escalating argument, moving more fully into the kitchen, reaching for the box, but Dan doesn’t wait for him to catch up.

“Do you think this is handling it? They get into stuff constantly, they have the run of the flat, and we’ve had three scares already.”

“I’m trying—”

“You can’t just get tired of them and give up because it’s not fun anymore!”

A crack of booming thunder interrupts them, and Phil takes a moment to consider. Takes in the responding reverberation of Dan, the wide white of his eyes. He looks a bit like one of the rabbits right now, body taught and trembling, poised to flee.

“Dan, are you—”

“Shut up. I have to get ready for work. We’re running late since you took so long in the shower. And now there’s nothing to eat—”

“I texted Alice already and told her you weren’t feeling well, that you couldn’t come in today,” Phil lies quickly. He hadn’t yet, but he’s certainly going to as soon as he leaves the room. He doesn’t think Dan going into work today will do anyone any good.

“Why?” Dan eyes him cautiously, seemingly surprised out of his anger for a moment.

“I know you didn’t get to bed until late last night,” Phil says slowly, “and you said you had a headache last night. You can text her and tell her it was a false alarm, I figured you could use some rest. And it’s not like we’re going to be doing anything today with the rain.” Phil knows it was a mistake as soon as the words leave his mouth. They don’t talk about the weather. Dan’s lip trembles.

“Fine! Since you clearly think I’m incapable of functioning like a proper adult, I’ll just go back to bed. Have a good day at work. I’ll take care of the sick rabbit you’ve already forgotten about, don’t worry.” Dan takes his time storming out of the kitchen, stomping feet and slamming doors, making some thunder of his own.

Phil stands alone in the kitchen for a long moment. He wants to go after Dan, but he doesn’t know what to say. Dan prefers to be given time to cool off, and Phil tries to respect that, as much as it eats away at him. He thinks of his mother’s repeated advice to never go to bed angry and wonders if it applies to the workday too. In the end, though, he doesn’t know how to fix this, so he slinks quickly back into the bedroom to grab his clothes and rushes through the rest of his morning routine. 

Time passes slowly once he gets to work, especially without Dan to go find and pester throughout the day. Alice claims she was going to have Dan do an entire overhaul of the storage closet organization system and that Phil, as bearer of the news of his absence, is now responsible for that. He considers arguing that he has a video to finish editing, but he doesn’t really want to do that either and he figures he might as well save tomorrow Dan the trouble. If he winds up playing several impressively heated rounds of Snap with Nina and John for the better part of the afternoon and leaving a bigger mess than he started, well, he can always help Dan finish the project tomorrow, if he’s feeling up to coming into work.

Alice finds them around 2:30 and yells at them half-heartedly before joining in for a final game, soundly trouncing both of them before sending them home early, claiming her prize is not having to look at their ugly mugs anymore today. Nina bounds off once they’ve gotten Phil to swear he’ll bring Dan the bouquet of _beautiful_ sunflowers they picked especially for him to wish him a speedy recovery. He won’t, of course, and they’ll just wind up displaying them on their desk, pointing them out to Dan everytime he walks by, just like the last three bouquets they picked since learning Dan had a strange aversion to the flowers.

Phil stops by his desk to check his emails and finds another one from his old professor, asking how Phil’s doing and, again, if he wants him to try to set up a meeting with a friend of his at the BBC. So he can finally get away from those damned flowers, he signs off with. Phil hovers the cursor over the delete button for a moment before shifting it over to press archive.

Maybe he’s doing a bit of his own avoiding too.

He does like this job quite a bit, is the thing. He did even before Dan came here, and of course that just makes it all the better now. Most days. But he also likes the rest of his coworkers, likes most of the work itself, likes being surrounded by plants. It’s certainly not what he’d expected to be doing when he’d gotten his degrees, but it’s not like he’d had all these great expectations either. He’d been fumbling around blindly, doing what he liked, when came across his path and seemed easy enough and enjoyable enough to keep him engaged. Like this job does. Just about the only thing he doesn’t like is everyone asking him endless questions.

His dad asks him when he’s going to stop faffing about and get a real job. His mates ask him if he’s like a farmer now, or what. His mum asks him for gardening tips and refuses to believe he still kills everything he touches, that he’s not actually a gardener.

He can only imagine what Dan’s parents say.

Phil decides to go pick a bouquet of his own for Dan. He seems to love having fresh flowers around the flat, and has endured a number of lectures from Alice about the flowers being there for everyone, not for Dan to take home with him to hoard. Somewhere along the way, Phil had picked up the habit of doing it for him, and Alice has mostly given up on trying to stop them as long as Phil sticks to the flowers from odd corners that are missing at least a few petals. Most of them are looking pretty ragged now, with the rain beating down on them all day, so it doesn’t take Phil long to gather a fistfull of cosmos, dahlias, and zinnias. He crowds them together close enough that it’s hard to tell most of them are missing a petal or two, and feels pretty proud of his arrangement. He also makes a detour on the way home, remembering the impetus of this morning’s fight, if not necessarily the true root.

When he gets home he finds Dan camped out in the lounge, duvet obscuring most of his body, and a familiar green hood hooked over his mess of curls. Phil approaches cautiously, flowers held out by one stiff arm, cereal box clutched in front of his chest like a shield. They don’t fight often, and Phil still hasn’t fully worked out how to approach the aftermath.

“How are you feeling?” he asks tentatively. 

“Alright. Better.” 

Phil can’t help the reflexive glance out the window to check the hue of the clouds, and he catches the end of Dan’s frown when he looks back. 

“Really,” Dan insists.

“I’m glad. I brought you these.” Phil shoves the flowers into the air between them. “And I got more cereal.”

“I’m sorry. For snapping,” Dan clarifies while Phil just stares at him.

“Oh, that’s okay. I’m sorry for leaving the cereal out. Again.”

“It’s not, though. I was in a bad mood and I took it out on you. It wasn’t about the cereal.”

“That’s alr—”

“No, Phil, stop saying that,” he snaps, voice edging back to the same steely tone that had made Phil flee this morning. He shuffles his feet, letting them work out some of their restlessness. “Shit. Sorry. I’m doing it again.”

“Thank you,” Phil tries again, working hard to bite back another dismissal, and this time Dan looks up and smiles. It’s just a small, tired smile, but it’s a quick glint of sunshine through the gloom.

“It was Sorrel, by the way. She threw up a bit, but she seems fine now. Luckily it wasn’t one of the really sugary ones.”

“Yeah. I’ll be more careful.” He pauses, lets his eyes wander over the five rabbits scattered around the room before finally coming to rest on Dan, gaze intent. “I’m trying to take good care of them.”

“I know,” Dan says, voice thick and sticking a bit in his throat.

“I just don’t always know how.”

Dan lets out a loud, heavy breath before responding. “Me either.”

“But we’re trying? Together?”

“Yeah.” 

Phil finally lets himself move, setting the flowers and the cereal on the coffee table before collapsing onto the couch, limbs falling haphazardly across Dan’s. He gives Phil a small pinch on his elbow, drawing his attention back. "But no more calling in sick for me, okay? I can make that decision on my own." "Of course. I'm sorry. I was just worried, and then I kind of panicked. But I won't do it again, promise." "Good." "Good?" Phil repeats, just to make sure. “So long as you don’t go making any more of them," Dan says, nodding at the clump of rabbits sprawled on the rug. "We’ve got more than enough to keep our hands full, and it was fucking hard adopting off some of the smaller ones. Ridiculous rabbit barfing weirdo.”

“I’ll do my best. If you promise to remind me every once in a while why they’re not necessary.”

“Of course, you dork, I—Phil!” he interrupts himself with a squeal, gesturing over Dan’s shoulder, “Ivy’s eating my flowers!”

Phil spends the next few minutes chasing Ivy around the room trying to retrieve the biggest dahlia of the bunch from her. It’s worth the stubbed to and seizing lungs, though, for the wheezing laughter it draws out of Dan and late afternoon sunlight pouring in the window.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! [Tumblr post here](https://phanomeheart.tumblr.com/post/188628558787/you-are-the-storm-i-am-lost-in-t-32k-they/)


End file.
